Aden Spivak

General Manager

IndoTeak Design - San Diego, CA

  • Led all sales and operations for a $4.5-million grossing company, managing direct reports and reporting to the CEO.

  • Coordinated multi-phase custom fabrication, facilitating communication with customers, the production team, and suppliers for timely delivery and customer satisfaction.

  • Closed an average of five sales per month, generating over $1.7 million in my first year.

  • Developed and implemented CRM systems, manufacturing software, and custom pricing tools to enhance operational efficiency.

  • Developed the company’s brand identity, including colors, assets, fonts, logo, and formatting guidelines to enhance brand recognition

  • Resolved high-value claims, ensuring strong relationships with key clients were preserved.

  • Sourced and on-boarded a new accounting firm, transitioning from local server-based accounting softwares to a cloud-based solution that integrated with all other systems.

  • Developed custom client-facing software.

Sample Coordinator

Madera Surfaces - Los Angeles, CA

  • Managed material sampling operations, overseeing one direct report and collaborating closely with the Sales Manager.

  • Designed and implemented an inventory management system, streamlining operations across multiple locations.

  • Optimized sample production processes, maintaining a minimum inventory of 100 samples per product at two locations.

  • Performed predictive inventory analysis to strategically place purchase orders.

  • Developed a web-based sample ordering platform.

Product Engineer

NOS Audio - Los Angeles, CA

  • Led recruitment and supervision of programmers and 3D rendering specialists, ensuring cohesive collaboration and adherence to project milestones.

  • Managed the design, development, and distribution of pro-audio hardware and software, reporting directly to ownership.

Freelance

web development

music production

sound design

Scripts

PDF Label Maker

Many industries require the distribution of samples, from food products to material samples. Adobe InDesign is an incredible platform for generating high-quality PDF files. I was tasked with generating thousands of images based on thousands of algorithmically generated SKUs. As a result, I created this script. This Adobe InDesign script takes a CSV and a config.txt file and returns a PDF label for each line in the CSV file, streamlining & standardizing the process of product-label creation.

Kontakt Poly-Midi CPU Meter

When engineering VST plugins (virtual studio technology), understanding how different settings or dependencies affect a codebase’s CPU usage is crucial. This Python script measures the CPU usage of a specific application while sending MIDI notes to a DAW (digital audio workstation), providing insights into performance bottlenecks and helping optimize plugin performance.

GPT File Renamer

AI excels in solving previously unsolvable problems. Virtual Instrument developers often license large sample libraries from various vendors, requiring the obfuscation of tens of thousands of filenames. GPT File Renamer uses the OpenAI ChatGPT API to automate this process. It reads all filenames within a specified directory, processes them to remove unwanted characters, and renames the files based on ChatGPT’s creative responses, simplifying a task that would otherwise be manual and time-consuming.

Image Flipper

Brand identity is crucial for increasing sales and retaining customers. While working on an e-commerce import of over 5,000 products, I encountered a manual Photoshop process for creating a mirror effect on uploaded images. This method was unsustainable and prone to user error. Using the OpenCV Python library, I automated this process, significantly improving processing speed compared to batch processing in Photoshop. This tool has been in use for the last three years.

Film Strippers

Anyone who has worked on a UI or UX team for local software is familiar with filmstrips. Although considered outdated, filmstrips effectively create complex visual effects. Tools like KnobMan generate basic animations, but more complex projects required Adobe AfterEffects and OpenCV to create animation frames. When I couldn’t find a tool to concatenate these frames vertically into one file, I developed Film Strippers, which simplifies the animation process by automating the merging of individual frames into a single cohesive strip.

Software & UI

Stela was the first and only digital instrument I developed at NOS Audio. In 2017, when I first met Eric Dahlberg, NOS Audio’s CEO, we devised an automated process for sampling sounds from hardware instruments, FX pedals, and processors. This enabled us to capture the essence of rare hardware, laying the groundwork for all future digital products.

Stela operates within the Kontakt platform, which uses its proprietary scripting language, KSP. I designed the UI components with Photoshop, Illustrator, and Knobman, although Kontakt’s limitation to low-resolution images was a notable drawback.

The project spanned six iterations and involved approximately 900 lines of KSP code. Eric Dahlberg and I collaborated closely on the UX and overall concept, blending technical precision with creative vision.

Milo is NOS Audio’s flagship VST Plugin. We used a convolution function to measure the tonal changes that microphones and preamps impart onto an audio signal.

We call each dataset an “Impulse”. Using an anechoic chamber, we recorded over thirty different microphones [including our own models], as well as seven preamps.

Using this data we were able to process audio recorded on our affordable microphones in such a way that they sound similar to microphones worth more than $30k.

All the microphone images are 3D modeled in blender, and the rest of the components were created in Photoshop or taken from icon & GUI kits. This program was written in C++ using the JUCE framework.

Media

Video & Media:

While at NOS Audio I reached out to content creators, exchanging free products in exchange for demo videos. I also directed and edited the “NOS12 & Panther MK2 Drum Tracking” video at Farmadelica Sound.